[spectre]
Laboratory Life - exhibition & talks, March 2011, Brighton
Honor Harger
honor at lighthouse.org.uk
Wed Mar 2 12:10:51 CET 2011
Dear spectres,
We have had an amazing two weeks at Lighthouse, as 21 artists and
scientists transformed our space into a science laboratory. The
works they created whilst on-site are now on show in an exhibition.
Please come and see it. It's open till next Monday.
The artists and scientists will be presenting their projects at the
Lighthouse Monthly Talk this Thursday evening, and we'll be hosting a
forum this Saturday to discuss some of the issues raised by the
project. Come along and meet the wonderful people who made
Laboratory Life happen.
Best wishes,
Honor Harger
Director
Lighthouse
http://www.lighthouse.org.uk
____________________________________________
Laboratory Life
An art-science laboratory led by artist Andy Gracie
Organised by Lighthouse and The Arts Catalyst
Staged as part of Brighton Science Festival
Open Laboratory: 20 - 28 February 2011
Exhibition preview: 01 March 2011, 6-9pm
Exhibition: 02 - 07 March 2011, 11am-6pm
Talk by Lead Artists: 03 March 2011, 6.30 for a 7pm start
Open Forum: 05 March 2011, 2pm
At: Lighthouse, 28 Kensington St, Brighton BN1 4AJ
More information: http://www.lighthouse.org.uk &
http://www.artscatalyst
____________________________________________
Laboratory Life is a unique, interactive art-science laboratory, open
to the public. Conceived and led by artist Andy Gracie, a group of
international artists, doctors and scientists have been working
collaboratively on the creation of a series of projects exploring the
cutting edge of medical technology in a temporary open laboratory.
EXHIBITION
Laboratory Life is an exhibition of the five works-in-progress made
by 21 international artists, scientists and doctors in an open
laboratory at Lighthouse, exploring bioscience and the use of medical
technology.
The exhibition is the result of 9 days of intensive work carried out
by five groups, led by artists, Andy Gracie, Adam Zaretsky, Kira
O'Reilly, Bruce Gilchrist, and Anna Dumitriu and features DNA
tattooing, astrobiology, infected textiles, illustrations of
synthetic biology made by the public, and a garden shed for DIY
tissue culture.
Laboratory Life was named after Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar's
well-known book about an anthropological study of a scientific
laboratory. Lighthouse was transformed into a living laboratory where
an interdisciplinary mix of artists and scientists formed five
groups, who worked in deep collaboration in the public eye.
It is this open nature that has made the laboratory so unique. Most
scientific laboratories are closed to the public, and we have little
idea of what goes on inside them. Laboratory Life adopted a radically
open structure, inviting the public to come and visit the
laboratories, meet the artists and scientists as they were working,
and discuss what they were doing. As well as taking away new
knowledge, techniques and understanding, the participating artists
and scientists found unexpected ways to stimulate public engagement
with bioscience.
Laboratory Life is organised by Lighthouse and The Arts Catalyst,
with support from The Wellcome Trust. It was conceived by Andy
Gracie, based on the Interactivos? model developed by the Media Lab
Prado in Madrid and is part of Brighton Science Festival. Our science
advisors are John Paul, Helen Smith and Tom Shakespeare.
The artists and scientists participating in the project will be
speaking about their works in progress at a talk at Lighthouse on 3
March (Doors, 1830). We will be exploring some of the ethical and
social questions raised by the project at a free open forum on
Saturday 5 March (1400).
LABORATORY LIFE PROJECTS
- Tattoo Traits
Led by Adam Zaretsky
Collaborators: Zack Denfield, Helen Bullard, Simon Hall
This group of artists and doctors examined the feasibility of a new
notion - "DNA Tattooing". They explored the ethical, legal, and
health issues that might be raised by such a process. Their work
involved the creation of a "new media" which they have referred to as
Shecan, and the extraction of hybrid DNA from this media. They then
adapted a tattoo gun, with the intention of tattooing a novel
sequence of hybrid DNA into the nucleus of a living cell, something
which is statistically improbable, but conceptually possible.
Their exhibition of work-in-progress features The Shroud of Shecan, a
monoprint cloth containing the residue of their new media, Whirling
Dervish Human Centrifuge, a sculptural and performative device which
also contains Shecan, the adapted tattoo gun, beans which have
received DNA tattoos, photographs of their work, and a release which
the group adapted to manage the legal and contractual issues
associated with DNA tattooing.
- Public Misunderstanding of Science
Led by Bruce Gilchrist
Collaborators: Kate Genevieve, Simona Casonato, David Louwrier, Daksha Patel
This group of artists and scientists spent several days testing the
public's understanding of science. Visitors to their laboratory were
invited to draw and illustrate their understandings of scientific
information and protocol, while listening to scientific discourse on
synthetic biology.
Their exhibition of work-in-progress is an animated film, which
features the drawings sound-tracked with the original discourse and
field recordings made on-site at a medical laboratory.
- The Garden Shed Lab
Led by Kira O'Reilly
Collaborators: Valerie Furnham, Columba Quigley, Genevieve Maxwell
This group of artists and scientists created a space for exploring
the relationship between biotechnologies and domestic everyday
experiences, such as cooking, tinkering, composting, and gardening.
They build a garden shed in their laboratory and inside worked with
tissue culture - a technology now just over 100 years old. In order
to practice home tissue culture, they made a sterile laminar flow
hood and a tissue culture incubator. The group incubated chick
embryos, opened the eggs, and attempted to create cell cultures from
them, always mindful of the ethical issues of these practices. The
group explored the early histories of tissue culture, re-creating an
experiment first performed in 1926 by tissue-culture pioneer, Thomas
Strangeways, who attempted to harvest cells from a fresh uncooked
sausage.
Their exhibition of work-in-progress features their garden shed,
containing their home-made sterile hood and incubator, their
laboratory equipment and photographs and video they made whilst on
site.
- The Quest for Drosophila Titanus
Led by Andy Gracie
Collaborators: Kuaishen Auson, Janine Fenton, Meredith Walsh
This group of scientists and artists were engaged in an
astrobiological experiment using various phenotypes of Drosophila
melanogaster (the fruit fly), one of the most important organisms
used in developmental biology and genetics. Since the early 1960s
Drosophila have also played a critical role in space research and are
regularly used in experiments on the International Space Station. As
such they offer themselves as a perfect organism with which to
conduct an experiment about how life might survive elsewhere in the
solar system. Research suggests that Saturn's moon Titan may be a
possible site for life beyond Earth, and at the very least may offer
us clues as to how life appeared here.
Taking inspiration from diagrams obtained from NASA the group
developed an apparatus with which to expose the fruit flies to
various environmental conditions found on Titan. The aim being to
take the first step in developing a new species which could adapt to
living there. The 'best' flies from each experiment were selected to
form a breeding colony which would be the ancestors of this new
creature.
Their exhibition of work-in-progress includes the experimental
chamber, video documentation of the experiments, a printed manual
which describes the experimental process, the breeding colony and the
memorial to failed individuals.
- Infective Textiles
Led by Anna Dumitriu
Collaborators: Rosie Sedgwick, Sarah Roberts, Brian Degger, Melissa Grant
This group of artists, doctors and scientists worked on the
development of a textile-based artwork that takes the form of a
Regency style dress stained with bacterial pigments and patterned by
antibiotics. Their work used 'garage science' methods and 'DIY'
microbiological processes to explore the notion of infection control.
During the lab they cultured microbes from the local environment
including soil, buildings and other public places. They then stained
silk thread with natural antibiotics - including cloves, turmeric and
green tea - and used them to create embroidered patterns (based on
microscopic images of bacteria and historic Regency designs) on
fabric. The dress was then placed in a 'giant petri dish' filled with
culture media made from supermarket products, upon which
environmental bacteria, selected on the basis of the attractive
natural pigments they were producing (burnt oranges, rose pinks etc),
were grown.
Their exhibition features the Regency style dress, which has now been
pasteurized so that the bacteria are no longer living, video
documentation of their project, framed works (which show slides of
cultured bacteria and moulds, Gram's stain paintings embroidered with
antibiotic threads and drawings made by visitors to the lab) and a
table of items used in their lab.
MORE INFORMATION
Laboratory Life online:
http://www.lighthouse.org.uk/whatson/laboratorylifeopenlab.htm
http://www.artscatalyst.org/experiencelearning/detail/laboratory_life/
Participants' blog:
http://lablife.posterous.com/
Lighthouse
Tel: +44 1273 647197
email: info at lighthouse.org.uk
twitter: http://twitter.com/LighthouseArts
URL: http://www.lighthouse.org.uk/
The Arts Catalyst
email: admin at artscatalyst.org
URL: http://www.artscatalyst.org
--
Honor Harger
Director
Lighthouse
http://www.lighthouse.org.uk
Address: 28 Kensington Street, Brighton, BN1 4AJ, UK
Tel: +44 1273 647197
email: honor at lighthouse.org.uk
Find us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/LighthouseArts
Join our mailing list: http://www.lighthouse.org.uk/about/signup.html
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